Baby Mine
by The Cry-Wank Kid
Summary: When Parker Morgan loses his best friend, he can't control the force that keeps pulling him back to the house where tragedy struck. Neither can many others to come. Based on an RP with another author from here. M/M Tate pairing.
1. As Long As I'm Living

_Parker. He is morbidity, cemeteries and post mortem photographs. He is camp and theater and melodrama. He is tragedy personified with Kleenex in his pockets, dead Disney moms and Dickensian poverty. He is long fingers and limp wrists and haunted button eyes; babies and girls' dresses. He is germs and grief, runny noses and The NeverEnding Story. Parker is my Parker, and no one else in the world will ever be like him..._

Tate Langdon lay in the memory of his teenage bed, watching the storm outside periodically illuminate the ceiling. He didn't know how long it had been raining or how long he'd been lying there or how long mama and Addie and all their things had been gone. In death, he'd found, time moved differently. Forever had no meaning anymore. His entire existence was one long, cold, boring day.

His hand teased the waistband of his jeans as he considered jerking off. He wasn't horny or even particularly bored. But the scent of his best friend, the vividness of his memory was still so potent in Tate. He remembered the way that Parker's breath sounded, the horse intermittent snuffle when he slept; the slightly ill heat of his chest and the salt taste of his face. Tate thought that maybe if he touched himself, if he associated the memories with an intense spasm of feeling, they'd stay longer. He wouldn't forget the boy's voice or his face.

Before he could unzip, thunder clapped and the house shook, the room illuminating and its phantom contents chattering like cold teeth. Tate's dark eyes widened, filling. He was a little boy again, stuck in the memoriam body of a teenage mass murderer. "Mama..." he called hoarsely, a desperate whisper.

Nora came to his bedside, bringing with her the scent of deadstock perfume and notes of old phonograph music, her cold hands tender on his face.

* * *

**-Three weeks earlier-**

When Parker Morgan slept, he dreamt of mothers. The fevered subconscious trips filled the boy-so charismatic in life-with a vulnerable longing that felt like hot chicken broth in his chest and his eyes. In them, he could remember crying: the feeling like his nose was full of chlorine, like he'd stayed underwater too long in a swimming pool. The _Dumbo _montage haunted him. Mothers rocked babies in long arms and elephant trunks. They smelled like gardenias and violets. A mother kangaroo slept in the corner with her baby. She sounded like a rocking chair.

_I'll love you forever. I'll like you for always._

It was always the same. Just at the moment where everything was safe and lovely and the hurting stopped, when everything was black and white and illustrated like a sentimental kids' book, suddenly they all went stiff and cold. They smelled like hospitals, formaldehyde, and the cardboard-crunch of their bones was all wrong. They shouldn't be stiff like that.

_As long as I'm living. AS LONG AS I'M LIVING. _

Parker's green eyes popped open abruptly, his body jolting awake as "Sliver" blared through the speakers of his alarm clock radio. "Fuck," he muttered, breathing hard. His heart felt like a freight train.

_Grandma take me home, grandma take me home, grandma take me home, I wanna be alone..._

The dark-haired boy grinned wanly at the hoarse comfort of Kurt Cobain's voice. It was the only Nirvana song he liked. In general Parker liked his bands a little quirkier, less hard: Beat Happening, They Might Be Giants. Indie-pop was clever. Grunge was more Tate's thing.

Parker groaned, peeling himself off of the cot he slept on in lieu of a bed. It wasn't comfortable at the best of times, but today he was hungover, and furthermore, sick. Living in a home that wasn't heated half the time, where nutrition was Top Ramen and booze, would have given any seventeen-year-old a permanent sniffle. His eyes felt crusty from sleep still and his head ached dully with fever. He coughed, his slight shoulders shaking with the force. He couldn't remember anymore whether he was thin through genetics or illness.

Parker stood, rubbing his eyes and pushing his overgrown bangs out of them. He felt shitty enough to avoid changing his clothes, but vanity prevailed. Barely looking, he grabbed black jeans and a striped cardigan from his closet and stripped quickly, putting them on. The only thing he didn't change was the faded, shrunken NeverEnding Story tee-shirt he wore under the sweater.

The hungover boy swayed, struggling to steady himself as he sat back down to shove his feet into his ancient, dirty white Keds. Noticing that he'd left his scrapbook out, he stashed it quickly back under his cot. Parker's heart skipped a beat.

He looked around the small bedroom. Like all of the trailer, it was in disarray, stark and undecorated. The floor was a fortress of clothes and videocassettes. The teenager's disaffected face softened when he caught sight, yet again, of the little framed photo on the bedside table. The woman in it was in her late twenties, with Parker's pale skin and off-black hair. Even her elfin facial features and upturned nose mirrored his own almost exactly, right down to the faded spray of freckles.

Parker's face felt like it could crack. "I'll be good today, mom," he said quietly. "I promise." He kissed the little frame gently before stashing it too under the cot. He wondered if he'd be able to catch Tate before the first period bell rang.


	2. The Void Behind My Face

**A/N: So, I didn't give this a proper introduction in the first chapter. So here it is. Welcome to Baby Mine, what will probably be my longest fanfic to date. A bit of background on it: As I stated in the summary, this is based off of a text-based RP that I've been doing with another author from here for about the past year. It will follow mostly the same course of events as that RP, but I'll be taking some liberties, changing some things, and weaving it into a novel-style story.**

**For example, I changed the location here from LA to Olympia, Washington. This wasn't the case in RP, but I just felt that Olympia was more fitting for a ghost story and for Parker as a character. Though in my head-canon, the shooting usually took place in the spring of Tate's junior year, I'm changing it here to the fall of his senior year. And you will notice other little changes made here and there.**

**I'm really excited to share Parker with the fanfic community as a whole. He's one of my favorites (okay, probably my absolute favorite) and has become something of an alter ego for me. I don't expect a story where Tate Langdon is shipped with a boy to be wildly popular, but I hope at least a few of you come to love Parker as I do.**

**And just to clarify: yes, Parker is a gay man. Tate, in this fic, isn't specifically gay, but he's fluid and they are shipped. Like I said, that might bother some people, but he's been put with girl OC's over and over and some of you might like something different. Okay, anyhow, on to the fanfic!**

* * *

It was noon. Parker sat slumped in his chair, his arms crossed protectively over himself and his eyes glaring warily at the seven students and two counselors who shared the small circle. Since he showed up to play practice drunk a few weeks prior, the teacher had insisted he attend the school's weekly therapy group. Parker hated it. The drama teacher had forced real-life drama on him, technicolor and sobbing. It made him want to choke.

"You have a problem," Mrs. Termine wailed. She was near tears, which pissed Parker off more than ever. It was _his _problem. If anyone deserved to cry about it, it was him, and he wasn't. "And you'll never fix it if you won't open up and won't deal with your grief over your mother..."

"That was like, five years ago," said Parker flatly. "Yes, it sucked, I was sad. But time passes. You get through things. You get over them. I really don't see what everyone suddenly ganging up and yelling at me is supposed to do..."

"Okay, first of all," spoke up Cassie, a girl whose syrupy voice made Parker nauseous, "it just seems like you really want attention. I mean, you come in here and tell us how sick you are, how you're drinking, how you almost died, but you don't really want a solution. You just want to be looked at. Second, my mom died, too: you _never _get over it..."

"-No, _you _never got over it!" Parker exclaimed, cutting Cassie off. "You don't get to own my experience! Fuck! I am so goddamn sick of everyone telling me what to feel all the time about _my _life! _My _family! She loved _me!" _

To Parker's chagrin, tears of pure anger shot to his eyes. Mrs. Termine passed him a tissue box.

The box made something snap inside of him. His feelings were not sweet and tender and painful. They were fiery and violent. He didn't want to be babied and pampered and patronized, and he sure as all hell did not want a goddamn Kleenex. What he wanted was for his rage to be recognized and acknowledged. He took the box and threw it hard across the room-right at Cassie. It missed her when she ducked and instead crashed into the wall behind her and fell to the floor with an unsatisfactory silence. The cardboard came open a bit on impact, scattering tissues on the floor. Parker liked that part.

Amidst a chorus of indignant shouts he fled the office, walking out through the double doors and through the student parking lot.

* * *

Outside the mid October day was sunny and mild, not as bright as summer had been but still lacking the season's usual gray fog. The fallen leaves, as crunchy-stiff as old bones, swirled in circles from the trees around Parker's car, their colors autumnal and brilliant. The old Ford Escort his dad let him use was making funny sounds again, its congested engine trying to drown out Weezer in the tape deck. It was more like a lawn mower than a car.

_The world has turned and left me here, _sang Rivers Cuomo mournfully through the din of the engine. _Just where I was before you appeared. And in your place, an empty space, has filled the void behind my face..._

Parker swore loudly, bashing his fists down on the steering wheel, his voice cracking. The engine paid little mind, and Rivers seemed unbothered. His voice stayed as even and disaffected as always. In Parker's peripheral vision plastic skeletons and cardboard gravestones taunted him from faded green lawns. They seemed to belong to people who had never known loss at all, fortunate people making a mockery of everything traumatic that had ever happened to him.

He parked at Oddfellows, the large cemetery a few blocks from Olympia High. Normally he just would have walked, but he didn't want to risk being caught this time and dragged back to high school. For a quick moment he was feral, kicking and beating the old vehicle, making dents in it until he was exhausted. His dad wouldn't notice. And even if he did, the old drunk wouldn't care. Parker would just say that someone hit him in the parking lot and didn't leave a note.

Sighing, he took a cigarette from his backpack and lit up, lying down on his back behind a row of trees. He only ever smoked when he was very upset or very drunk. He shook his head, exhaling. In side profile he caught sight of a little, flat grave marking nameless newborn twins from the earlier part of the century. Parker grimaced, shaking his head. "I'm so sorry," he whispered, running one hand over the old stone. "So so sorry..."

Parker didn't know how long he lied there, quiet and squinting into the wan sun while skeletons danced in his head. But suddenly he heard a rustling behind him, as if there were squirrels in the trees.

Parker turned his head, slow and disinterested, only to be hit in the face with a big pile of leaves. He cried out, sitting up blindly.

Tate sank down next to him, laughing. "I scared you."

Parker took a drag from his cigarette and exhaled through his nose, rolling his eyes. "No," he countered, trying not to smile, "you surprised me. I keep telling you there's a difference."

"Whatever," Tate shrugged, studying a fallen leaf with all the intent of a true naturalist. Parker reached back and stubbed his half-gone cigarette out on the root of a tree. He knew that smoking bothered Tate's stomach.

"Whatcha thinkin' about?"

Parker's eyes cast upward, surveying the orange and red kaleidoscope of the treetops. "Skeletons," he said flatly. "Dead babies."

Tate's straight nose wrinkled. "Charming," he quipped, studying Parker. "You're pale."

The dark-haired boy coughed into the threadbare sleeve of the black and white cardigan. "It's fine," he dismissed.

"No, you're cold," Tate insisted, stripping off his thick, padded flannel jacket to reveal a blue thermal shirt below. He draped the plaid coat around Parker's delicate shoulders. "Here, take it. You know I have the immune system of a medieval warrior."

Parker couldn't help but giggle, sullen mood be damned. Tate had that effect on him. The blond boy stood, holding a pale hand out to Parker. "C'mon," he said. "Let's get out of here. If I wanted to hang around dead people I'd go to my house. At least those ones talk."

Parker grinned, pulling his arms into the jacket, and took Tate's hand. His fingers were longer than Tate's even though they were the same height. "Kay," he said, standing. "Let's go to my place."


	3. Grave Dolls

**This story is off hiatus now! I put it on because my Freak Show fic, _Can I Keep You?, _took over my brain. But that's done (the finale will be posted right after this), so now I'm going to focus on this one again. **

**Content warning: Stillbirth and infant loss.**

* * *

_Don't you ever fear, I'm always near, I know that you need help. Your tongue is twisted, your eyes are slit, you need a guardian..._

"...And you know I'm yours..." Parker sang along to that line on the album, taking his eyes off the road for a second to turn to Tate.

"...And I know you're mine," Tate finished, knowing the routine. Parker reached for his hand, giving it a squeeze, and smiled.

Tate smiled back. He'd grown up socially awkward under the iron hand of Constance Langdon, his only real friends his two disabled siblings. As a result, he understood little about guy code or how male friends were supposed to behave together.

Parker, starved for affection and comfort, for closeness, took advantage of this fact. The tenderness of their friendship, so uncharacteristic for two teenage boys, meant the world to him. It was his anchor in the horrid storm that was his life.

Tate sighed. "This record is so gay..."

"Thanks hun," said Parker dryly, his eyes on the road now. "That makes me feel good."

He turned down a dirt road and parked the car halphazardly in front of the trailer. He usually didn't take friends home, but Tate never minded his place. He actually seemed kind of fascinated with it, as if he enjoyed the mess.

"Where's your dad?" Tate asked as the two boys walked inside and waded through the squalid living room. The stark, stained carpet was scattered halphazardly with food wrappers and beer bottles.

Parker shrugged. "Hell if I know," he said, stepping into the kitchen and opening the fridge. "Sorry, by the way. About the heat." He coughed again into the sleeve of Tate's jacket, ignoring what felt like a growing fever, before pulling out a two-liter of soda. "You down for some rum and coke?" he asked, brows raising.

* * *

Parker didn't know whether the heat was from illness or intoxication. He'd shed the coat, downed his third tall drink, and was now busy coughing and looking increasingly pale.

Tate quirked a blond eyebrow. "You okay there?" he slurred. "You need me to get you some cough syrup?"

Parker swayed, holding up the mostly-empty cup in his hand. "This is the Morgan family cough syrup," he laughed. "Right here..."

Tate sighed contentedly, flopping down on the cot-bed. "This is the life."

"Oh yeah," Parker snorted, "A jerkoff drunk for a father and no heat. The high life for sure."

Tate shrugged. "Better than having my mom up your ass all the time." He fell silent and toyed with the plush rabbit in his hand. She was handmade of felt and decades-old, part of a dress-up set that Parker's grandmother had originally made for his mother when she she was a child. Her floral dresses and little felt shoes in their small wooden chest were unmistakably sixties.

His father had never been thrilled about Parker playing with the thing as child. He'd have been even less so now, to know he still kept it. It wasn't just that it was one of the few things that seemed to bring his mother back. Parker still took pleasure in dressing and styling the little felt rabbit, beautifying her in garden prints and making sure that her flats matched her shift dress. He was drawn to the simple beauty of it all.

Parker knelt beside his bed and pulled out his scrapbook. "C-c'mere," he stammered. "I want you to see this."

Tate scooted onto the floor and sidled up beside him, close enough to feel the unnatural heat coming off of the dark-haired boy's body. Parker sniffed and rubbed the shine from his forehead with his palms before opening the old photo album.

Tate's eyes widened. Inside were pages and pages of black and white photographs. The people in them had stiff, unsmiling faces and wore stiff, unsmiling clothes, stilted in the old kind of photography-the kind that took a long time. Most of them had to have been taken a hundred or more years ago. Some were cut from the pages of books, others photo-copied from library machines. Others still appeared to be originals, with curling edges and thick, yellowed paper.

He put his drink down, his taste for it suddenly lost. "Where did you get these?"

"All over," Parker said, coughing again before getting his bearings. "I don't steal them, that's disrespectful. You know? Bad for the heart. At most antique stores you can buy them for like, a dime each. I used to go there with change from the couch. You just have to look."

Tate squinted. A few of the photos depicted adults, but most were of babies and toddlers, swaddled in white and eerie-still. "They look dead."

"They are dead," said Parker matter-of-factly, wiping his nose with his wrist and taking another swig of his drink. "Victorian post-mortem. The infant mortality rate was just so _high _back then, and photography was expensive. A lot of people, these were the only photos they'd ever have of their kids." He was talking too quickly, his eyes reddened and glassy and wide.

Tate's looked baffled. "What... why?"

Parker looked at him, unblinking. "_Momento mori..._" he whispered, frantic. "The Victorians were just so cool about death. They were so... ceremonial. So warm. Did you know that they used to have vials for tears? They did; they'd collect their tears, for a year, in these little glass vials whenever they cried, and after a year they'd pour it all over their loved one's grave. There's something smart about that, very smart. I'd do it for my mom, if I could cry..." His speech slowed and he hung his head. "...I don't think I can anymore."

Tate pushed the rum and coke out of Parker's reach, placing the rabbit doll into his hand instead. "You shouldn't drink any more," he said gently. "You're sick."

Parker's glum mood vanished as quickly as it had come. He clutched the rabbit in one hand and used the other to flip a few pages. "Look, here," he said, pointing to a yellowed photo of a little wax doll in a wooden casket-box. "Grave dolls. They usually wore the dead baby's real clothes and were made with his or her hair. I don't think it's macabre. I think it's beautiful. I wish I had one."

Tate's nose wrinkled. "Of who?"

Parker blanched noticeably as his manner slowed again. He coughed heavily into his sleeve before speaking. "When I was seven years old," he said weakly, a little hoarse, "my mom was pregnant. She had me at seventeen and she would have had my sister at twenty-four. It was a sister, a girl. We were gonna call her Jessica Aubrey." Parker clutched the rabbit close to his chest and breathed heavy, congested, his tearless eyes hardly there anymore. "But she died inside of my mom. She was almost full-term and everything, but Jessica just... died. She had to be stillborn at the hospital."

Tate winced, reaching out to put a hand on Parker's thin wrist. "I'm so sorry..." he whispered.

Parker shrugged. "It's just... I never got to see her, you know? I would have liked to have held her, even dead, or at least have seen a picture. I still wonder what she looked like, if she looked like my mom or me or what color her hair was. I would just like to have _some _little piece of her, you know, some little thing that I could touch and know that she'd actually been here. But they just took her away as soon as my mom had her. A year later they found my mom's first tumor, and in three years she was dead, too." He shook his head, his eyes a thousand-yard stare. "I never got to see her after, either..."

Tate looked into Parker's fevered eyes, their faces just inches from each other. He could feel the other boy's heat radiating and smell his shampoo. Tate wondered if the heat was truly fever or if it was pain, tears radiating through his skin like water vapor. He blinked. He wasn't sure who kissed who first.

It was a sweet kiss, the adolescent sort where every sense was amplified, each second slowed. The gentle bite of lower lips almost hurt; the tips of tongues were electric. The salt taste was intense, that and iron-something vaguely bloody. The faint clack of teeth and the smack of saliva rang like the tick of clocks in Tate's ears. He put his hands on Parker's back.

He'd never kissed anybody before. In an instant he pulled back and stared at his friend, fearful. "Shit," he muttered. "Parker, I..."

Parker said nothing. His eyes went white, the green irises rolling backward in his skull. He swayed a moment, then promptly fainted.


	4. When I See An Elephant Fly

_I seen a peanut stand / heard a rubber band / I seen a needle that winked its eye / But I be done seen about everything / when I see an elephant fly..._

When Parker woke the first thing he felt was heat. Not just the heat of his body, but heat all around him: unnatural, cloistering. He shot up with a start, his eyes adjusting to the darkness enough to tell him that he was in the guest bedroom at the Langdons' house. He groaned. Waking hurt.

"Shh, shh," said a voice in the dim light. "We've yet to break the fever; lie back down."

It wasn't Tate's voice. Parker looked around for his friend, but the only figure in the room was female, tall and slim and not quite humanly solid.

"Mrs. Nora..." he sighed, recognizing the ghost. Her face was peaked, her eyes red-rimmed as if she'd been crying. "That horrid, infernal box..." she said, her face crumpling. She cast a scornful look towards the small television in the corner of the room. "I've tried to make it stop, but I... I don't know how..."

The ghost melted into sobs as Parker squinted into the TV's dim light. _Dumbo_ was on: the scene where those awful, racist-caricature crows sing. He breathed a small sigh of relief. At least it wasn't that freaky Pink Elephants song; or worse yet, the mom scene.

"Hey," he whispered, sitting up and scooting to the edge of the bed to put his burning hands on Nora's cold shoulders. "Hey, it's okay. I can make it stop. Please don't cry..."

Nora jerked her head up and looked at him intently. "Parker," she said, suddenly eerily lucid. He hadn't realized that she knew his name. Half the time she was calling him Thaddeus or mistaking him for Tate. "Parker, you _mustn't _die here, do you hear me? You absolutely mustn't."

Fear gripped him. He was about to say more, but Nora vanished. A moment later the door cracked open, cigar smoke billowing in.

"Howdy," said the man. He was fair and handsome, his clothes straight out of the early 1980's.

Parker trembled. "Who are you...?"

The man sat, extending a cold hand to the mortal. "Hugo Langdon," he said, exhaling smoke. "Tate's dad."

"What? But you left, Tate said so..."

Hugo looked bitter. "Yeah," he muttered, "so the story goes. I could tell you all about _that _another time. But listen, kid, what the others say is true. You've gotta get out of here before this place sinks its nails in any further. There's still time. Run, and don't come back."

Parker coughed, his lungs irritated. "And what about Tate?" he asked weakly.

The ghost stood, heading for the door. "I fear it's already too late."

Parker scrambled to his feet and tried to catch him, but once he got out into the hall Hugo had vanished, leaving only the cherry-velvet scent of smoke in his wake.

"Tate?" he called, taking off down the dark hallway. "Tate! Oh god, come on..." Maybe it was the fever or maybe it was the dark, but the hall was suddenly winding and unfamiliar to Parker, no door or turn or crevice what he thought it would be. Desperate, he yanked down the old pull-out ladder and climbed to the attic, following the only noise he could hear.

When Parker reached he top, what he saw made his stomach lurch all the way to his knees. "Beau?" he said softly, running to the disabled boy. "Beau... oh god, who did this to you?"

Tate's older brother was chained, at a far corner of the attic, to a small, filthy cot. He looked as if he'd hardly been bathed or fed in weeks. Parker tugged desperately at the chains, fumbling with the locks, but it was useless. They wouldn't give.

"_Larry,_" Parker muttered, suddenly angry. "God, Tate was right about that piece of shit. I could fucking kill him myself..." He ran two frantic hands through his hair, causing the sweaty mess to stick up oddly in places. "Okay listen, Beau, I'm gonna get you out of here; I'm gonna get you help..."

He sprung from the cot and and clamored down the ladder, not bothering to push it back up. Next he descended the stairs for the first floor, feeling his way through the darkness until he found himself in the kitchen.

The only light glowed from the digital clock on the stove. In the faint red, he could just make out the crumpled form of a girl in one corner, weeping softly.

_Way too many crying women around here, _Parker thought dazedly, but he crept close and put a shaking hand on her shoulder, squinting to make out curled dark hair decorated with a single dahlia.

"Can I help you?" he whispered. "Are you okay?"

"Look what they did to me," the spirit hissed, lifting her face abruptly. Parker jumped back, covering his mouth to suppress a shriek. Her mouth was sliced open clear across the jaw into a gruesome smile.

He ran. From the far corners of the living room he thought he heard laughing, thought he heard the faint crack of Pop-Its and smelled their nostalgic, Fourth of July scent at his feet.

_I'm dreaming, _Parker thought. _This isn't real. I'm gonna wake up, okay, and everything is gonna be alright..._

"Stop it!" he yelled as he nearly tripped over a red-haired boy in bell-bottom jeans. "Just fucking stop it right now!" The preteen cackled, disappearing from Parker's line of sight before flashing once more in the corner beside an identical brother.

He grabbed at the first doorknob he could feel and nearly tumbled down another set of stairs, finding himself in the basement. Parker hugged himself, breathing hard and grasping desperately at what felt like the last thread of sanity in his mind.

_I'm Atreyu, _he thought, recalling his favorite film. _And I've gotta be brave. I can't let The Nothing get me..._

"T-Tate..." he called weakly into the blackness. "Tate, come on... this isn't funny..."

There was no reply. As Parker's eyes adjusted to the more intense dark of the cellar, faint phonograph music sounded from somewhere, deep with trombones. He heard the unnatural shuffling of dead feet and high, garbled whispers.

Trembling, he looked down to see two unfamiliar figures crossing his path. One was a tiny girl in a dirty white dress and bonnet, so infant-miniature that it was unseemly to see her walking. Her white skin was dirty, too, as if she'd crawled out of her grave. Lumbering behind her, tied to the rope in her hand, was a large jet-black animal. Its size and face suggested that it was a dog, though its gait and body shape were more bearlike than canine. It mumbled to itself lowly in a language Parker couldn't understand.

"Mama?" the grave-doll-girl called into the darkness. "Mama..."

Parker clasped both hands over his mouth, shaking his head wildly. "I'm sorry..." he moaned. "I'm sorry..."

The ghostly pair faded into the darkness, replaced by the sound of a gait that made Parker's blood run cold: the dying shuffle of failing feet interspersed with the metallic creak of the walker. He knew it before he even saw her.

_"Mom..."_

He recognized the smell of hospitals, disinfectant and piss, before he remembered her face. In his memories, he'd preferred to recall her looks when she was well and plump, her face full and her permed hair thick. He'd forgotten how ill she really looked at the end.

"How could you, baby?" she asked softly. "Not one tear? Not even after all the books I read you, all the times I held you for hours when you were upset... I loved you so tenderly, little one... You couldn't cry?"

If she'd been angry or accusing, Parker might have been okay. But sad was worse. Sad was real; sad cut him to the bone. But she wasn't real, she couldn't be. All of the others, sure, but not her. She died at the hospital, not here. She was buried and gone.

"This is mean!" he screamed, shutting his eyes. "This is fucking sick!"

He hardly remembered running back up the stairs, finding his way to the kitchen, picking out the sharpest knife. He hardly felt the thick slice as he dug the blade, lengthwise, into his wrist.

* * *

Parker's consciousness came and went in nauseating waves. In lucid moments, he was vaguely aware of being strapped to a gurney while a pale doctor hovered above him with deep, haunted eyes. Behind him he recognized Nora, who looked frightened, and Tate, who looked ready to cry.

"The gas should wear off shortly," the doctor said. "Luckily I was able to stop the bleeding without stitches."

_Gas. _Fear overtook Parker as he became aware of a rubber mask strapped to the lower half of his face. He tried to struggle, tried to reach out for Tate, to scream, but his body paid no mind to his brain's panicked whims. It was as if he were trapped inside of a rag-doll, limp and disconnected as it all went black again.

* * *

They didn't speak much the next day. Parker spent the daylight hours in bed in the spare room, on pilfered painkillers for his bandaged wrists, watching movies and sketching birds from Tate's library book. He took comfort in copying each curve and line exactly into his notebook, the delicate crimp of little talons and the soft hook of beaks. Round eyes, docile faces, soft-feathered wings.

"I like birds, too," Tate said softly, appearing in the doorway. He looked like he'd been crying, his eyes red-rimmed and underscored by circles.

"Why do you like them?"

"Cause they can fly away, I guess, when things get too crazy... You know, you're lucky my mom and Lawrence are out of town for the weekend. And that she sent Addie to stay with the neighbors, cause there's no way she'd keep quiet about this... Are you gonna tell your dad, anyway? About your wrists?"

Parker shook his head.

"What about the counselors at school?"

He shrugged. "Wouldn't matter. They already think I'm depressed."

"Are you?"

"I'm sad."

Tate nodded and crossed the room, sitting down awkwardly at the foot of Parker's bed. "Why are you sad?" he asked quietly.

Parker stared straight ahead into the TV's glow. _The NeverEnding Story _was playing, but for once he could hardly pay attention to it. He was near tears now; they quivered right at the edges of his eyes but didn't fall.

"I want a baby," he whispered, his voice quivering. "I mean, like, I really want one. I know guys our age aren't supposed to say that, but I do. I never told anybody before." He sniffled and swallowed hard. "My mom, you know, she loved having kids. She was the best mom in the whole world, no matter how young she was. I wanna be like her. I just... I wanna have kids and I wanna be their dad. I want to bathe them and dress them and feel sad when they're sad. I want to be able to cry if they cry on the first day of kindergarten, you know? My mom did that, because she really really loved me. It's not fair. It's not fair that she lost her kids and it's not fair that I can't have any. It's... it's all I want, and I can't have it."

"Come here," Tate murmured, scooting forward to take his best friend in his arms and rocking him gently, holding him tight. The embrace brought Parker painfully close to losing it, but somehow he kept the tears at bay. It wasn't like him to be so outwardly emotional, but now all the medicine was really doing a number on him.

Tate pulled back after a long moment and held Parker at arms length, looking intently into his big, sad eyes. "You are gonna be the most amazing dad someday," he said firmly. "I just know it."

That did it. Parker's eyes finally spilled over, one tear running down his cheek and another collecting under one nostril. "With who?" he asked bitterly, his face crumpling and his voice growing increasingly frantic. "I can't be with girls, Tate, I just can't..."

"With someone who really, really loves you," Tate insisted, thumbing away the tears and then using his sleeve to blot away their tracks. "Hey, look at me, okay? The world is gonna change someday."

Parker didn't look at him. He just reached rather desperately for the tissue box on the side table.

"Please don't cry," Tate said. "_I _love you. There, I said it."

Parker looked up from blowing his nose. Illness and tears were a deadly combination on the sinuses. "Wow," he laughed, "And you really chose my _most _attractive moment to tell me that, huh?"

Tate grinned, dimples flashing. "You're never unattractive, even snotty."

Parker rolled his eyes and set his clump of tissue back on the nightstand. "Get the hell in here, you dick," he said, pulling the covers back.

Tate did, gathering his friend up in his arms. "I'm tired," he sighed, sinking into the pillow.

"Me too."


	5. The Boy With the Sharpest Edges

**I must admit, it made me really happy to get a guest review of someone saying they love these two together! How cool to see someone outside of the RP I did shipping it!**

**And in response to IloveStallison's question re: will Parker die in the house... you'll just have to wait and see! ;) **

* * *

When Parker didn't see Tate in school the following week, he didn't think much of it. He figured the poor guy had probably caught whatever he had. A part of him was even relieved by his friend's absence. How did he face Tate, now that the lines of their friendship had been blurred?

Did Tate like boys? The question played in his head more than he liked to admit. Parker had never seen any evidence that he did. Then again, when he thought about it, he'd never seen any real evidence that Tate liked girls, either.

Did Tate like Parker? _If he ever did, I probably blew it, _the dark-haired boy thought. Parker Morgan was a bit of an anomaly at Olympia High. One of the school's few openly gay kids, he was slender and pretty, his face and body suggesting Peter Pan more than they did an action hero. He moved with effeminate mannerisms and spoke with the quintessential gay-boy lilt.

And yet... he was feared. Maybe it was his rough upbringing, but Parker carried himself with an uncanny self-possession that was rare in teenagers. He didn't need physical power to intimidate or designer clothes to impress. One withering glance from him could send football players scattering meekly to the sidelines. He wasn't loved, exactly, but he was respected.

But now, with Tate, he'd let the mask slip. He'd revealed his biggest secret: that beneath the cool exterior was a boy who wanted nothing more than love. He'd let someone see him cry and talk about babies. He'd been fragile, vulnerable. Weak.

It was exhausting, sometimes, to have to always be the most. The most stoic, the most dangerous, the most disaffected. The boy with the sharpest edges.

* * *

By Friday he'd grown a bit worried. He stopped by the Langdons' house after school and knocked on the door, but despite the cars in the driveway no one answered. Parker noticed that all the curtains were drawn, some windows shielded extra-dark with sheets and bedspreads. He knocked several more times to no avail before finally giving up.

He drove to the cemetery and and paced, smoking. How much longer could he live like this? Nothing ever felt good and nothing made sense. He looked ahead at the long rows of graves, of ended stories; the lives done and buried, their meanings null and void. What was the point, Parker wondered. Where was the hope in it all?

No. He wouldn't think like that; he couldn't, he shouldn't. He shouldn't think at all. He needed a goddamn drink.

He pulled back the sleeve of his shirt and examined his wrist, white and healing, scarred forever with its hidden gash. Parker stubbed the lit cigarette out on the soft flesh, drawing a shuddering breath.

* * *

"So something like... this?" Johnny asked, putting his pencil down and passing the small sketchbook across the booth to Parker. Le Voyeur was, in theory, a twenty-one-and-older establishment, but the staff of the small, graffiti-covered bar regularly looked the other way for their youngest patron. Parker's charm and charisma was a hit with the older, alternative crowd.

Parker looked down at the drawing before smiling up at his friend. Johnny Angel. He was a tall, thin man of twenty-three, with pale, far-off eyes and an odd manner of dress: skinny pants, combat boots, fur-collared coats.

"It's perfect," Parker said. "...You said he'll do it for free?"

Johnny nodded. "He's an apprentice," he said, sipping his drink. "He needs work for his portfolio. We can go now if you want to. Before your ass gets too drunk."

Parker gulped down the last of his whiskey sour with one hand and puffed at his cigarette with the other, letting the smoke out slowly. He flashed a crooked-toothed grin to cover up the nervousness he felt. "I dunno," he said. "Maybe another time."

"Suit yourself," said Johnny with a shrug, before eyeing his young friend's extensive collection of empty glasses. "Parker, dude, you weigh nothing. You wanna maybe ease up on the booze tonight, avoid the funeral for a few more years?"

Parker rolled his eyes and stubbed out his cigarette impatiently in an ashtray. "I wanna go dance at Jake's."

Johnny raised his white-blond eyebrows. "I dunno if Jesse's working the door tonight," he said, lighting up a smoke of his own. "And if he isn't, you're not getting in."

"I'll take my chances."

"Oh come on," Johnny quipped, "If you really want your dick sucked that badly I'll just pull you into the bathroom here."

Parker was nonplussed. "You don't have to come with me."

Johnny looked put-upon but got up anyway, heading for the door. Once outside, the pair passed a small group of guys who Parker recognized from school. They were rich kids, tan and athletic, dressed in letterman jackets and baseball hats.

"Par-ker!" shouted one guy, grinning as his group exited a diner.

Parker nodded noncommittally, hoping he wouldn't be forced to recall anyone's name.

"Where's what's-his-name?" the guy asked. "Tate."

"Dunno," Parker said, avoiding eye contact. He didn't want to talk about Tate. He didn't even want to think about him, least of all in front of this asshole. "He hasn't been at school."

The boy nodded. "Makes sense," he said. "I heard what happened with his brother."

Horrible flashes of memory gripped Parker like a panic attack, or bad TV. Beauregard, the dirty cot, the attic. Chains. Wanting to help but he couldn't-no, he _didn't._ But now he could only stutter. "W-what?"

"You know his brother who used to be in Special Ed. at our school? I guess he died, man. I mean, I know he had breathing problems and shit... that's rough, though. Sucks."

"Yeah," Parker muttered, stealthily grabbing Johnny by the sleeve and drifting away from the group of guys as quickly as his unsteady legs could carry him. "Rough. Real rough..."

When he'd sufficiently lost them he turned to his older friend, his breathing tense and shallow. "Where did you say that tattoo shop was?"

* * *

"You okay there?" laughed the tattooed apprentice. He was a young guy-nineteen maybe, or twenty-with dyed-black hair and eyeliner smeared under his hazel eyes.

Parker pressed his lips together, steeling himself against the buzzing of the electric needle and the searing pain against his thin sternum. "Fine," he muttered.

The design inked into his chest was an antique crib-meant to be sweet, really, but the way Johnny had drawn it made it look macabre, as if it could have doubled as a coffin in a post-mortem photo. Now the words Parker had added in his own writing were being tattooed around it: _I'll love you forever, I'll like you for always. _

It could be a challenge now, he figured, a point of pride. He could take his shirt off in the mirror every day and impress himself by not crying. Either that or every guy he ever fucked could be forewarned that he had mommy issues out the ass. Win-win, really.

Parker's tolerance for physical pain rivaled its emotional counterpart. The artist had seen guys far bigger and tougher-looking than Parker make a bit off a fuss getting chest pieces done. Parker just stared ahead, his eyes dazed and stricken. A single tear slipped down one cheek, unnoticed and silent. Quietly pained.

* * *

The damn thing hurt more healing than it did getting done. His flesh and bone ached and smarted at the touch, his chest tender in a way that was uncomfortable mentally. His head hurt, too, and his throat. He never quiet got unsick; it was just a matter of level.

The unlit room soothed his sore eyes a bit, the sterile rustle of the bed-liner below him a familiar comfort. Parker knew the school nurse's office well.

He heard someone else enter and watched as a familiar pair of Converse appeared, sticking out beyond the edge of the curtain separating their two beds. It took Parker a moment to work up the nerve to speak.

"Tate?"

No answer. Against the beat of familiar breathing, Parker slid the curtain back. Tate held himself around the middle, hunched over with his hair partially obscuring his face. He looked like a walking dead kid: unnaturally pallid, his eyes and nose underscored by red. His hair was so dirty that he may not have washed it in weeks.

"Are you okay, sweetheart?" Parker asked softly, too concerned to be embarrassed by the involuntary tenderness of his voice or the stupid, girly pet name that slipped out by accident. Stupid question.

Tate shook his head mutely, big puddles of tears forming in his eyes. He swallowed hard as one slipped down. He sniffled, a sound like puddle water up his nose.

"You know," he said, hoarse and quiet, "I was always kinda jealous of you. That you knew death. It all just seemed so _real_ to me, you know, so human. Raw. I thought it made you tougher, too, kinda badass. And my life, I dunno..." Tate sniffled again and shrugged, wiping his eyes on his jacket sleeve. "...it always felt like plastic. Fake. I know it hurt, but I wanted what you had." His voice broke, his face starting to crumple. "But now I have it, and I... I just wanna die..."

"Oh my god, hun, come here," said Parker intently, his mother-hen instinct kicking in. He all but yanked Tate onto his own cot and pulled the curtain shut all the way around them.

"There," he whispered, taking his crying friend in his arms. "Now no one can see."

Tate whimpered and held onto Parker so tightly that it hurt his ribs. "My st-stomach hurts..." he trembled.

"I know, hun, I know," Parker soothed, petting Tate's messy hair. "I'm so sorry."

He didn't mind the way Tate's chest pressed against his sore tattoo. Nor did he mind the tears that soaked his shirt or the continued, painful desperation of his grip. He just rocked Tate while he cried, his sobs so hard and choked that they were almost silent.

When he finally finished he jerked away from Parker abruptly, wiping his nose carelessly with one sleeve. He let Parker mop up his tears with the edge of the blanket, but he didn't seem particularly receptive. He seemed comatose suddenly, still. The bell sounded.

"You should go," Tate said flatly. His eyes were bloodshot from crying, but something new had overtaken them with an unsettling suddenness. They were cold in a way that Parker hadn't seen before.

"Are you gonna be okay?"

Tate was breathing too hard and too even. "Eventually," he said slowly, "everybody pays. Eventually, everybody suffers."

"Tate, what are you talking about?"

"You should go," he repeated. "You'll be late."

Parker pressed his lips together worriedly. "I'm gonna call you tonight, okay?" he said.

Tate barely nodded. Uneasy, Parker got up to go.

"Tate, I l... I'll... see you tomorrow."


	6. City of the Dead

**Sorry for the shortish chapter, but this one needed to stand alone. Content warning for school shootings, but hey, you're reading Murder House fic. Don't worry; this is nowhere near the end of the story.**

* * *

When Parker called Tate that night, no one answered. He waited half an hour, tried again, waited another half an hour and then tried a third time. Nothing. He finally gave up and went downtown by himself.

When dark overtook Olympia, the small city seemed to glow, revealing the night creatures lurking within its corners and cracks. Vampires rose from their cemetery bunks, passing Parker on the sidewalk, pale and bloodless and disguised as common goths. He could see the witches, too, the warlocks scheming in the corners of bars, sipping potions, plotting pain. Out on dancefloors zombies lurched, blank-eyed and brain dead, craving flesh. And ghosts... well hell, Parker already knew about those.

By all accounts, it was a city of the dead.

The boy at Jake's couldn't have been more than five years Parker's senior, with short bleach-blond hair and a pointed, elfin face. He lead Parker from the dance floor and pulled him into the men's bathroom, his tongue ring tasting metallic and clanging hard against Parker's teeth as the drunk teen's small weight fell limp against him, struggling to stay conscious.

He never spoke. He pulled Parker into a stall and pushed the door shut behind him, falling to his knees and undoing the younger boy's fly. Parker's hands gripped backwards at the slick, grimy tile wall. He shut his eyes and breathed in, hard and fast.

* * *

At first, he thought that someone had popped a paper bag. Parker was hungover and tired and covered in a layer of existential filth no shower could wash off. The loud noise annoyed him.

Then suddenly, all at once, everyone was running.

* * *

Sirens wailed and news anchors seemed to have appeared, with their cameras and vans, as quick and slick as phantoms. Parker wandered dazed through the maze of tears and people, watching bodies being carted out of the school on gurneys, shrouded in white.

_Momento mori. _But not now. It was 1994. There were no mementos left to be had. Just disinfectant and hospitals.

He didn't cry. All he could think about was Tate. He had to find Tate. Then the two of them could leave this horror show and spend the day at one of their houses, watching '80's adventure movies and making horrible, inappropriate jokes to cover up the fact that they were terrified. They could comfort each other. Everything would be okay.

While passing a small group of students, Parker recognized Eric, an acquaintance with whom he and his best friend shared a class. "Hey," he breathed, approaching the guy, "have you seen Tate?"

The other boy shook his head grimly. "They think he fled for home," he said. "What I heard last is they're sending a SWAT team over there."

Parker squinted. The words hurdled towards him like a semi-truck; he understood them but couldn't quite make sense of the sentence, like a first-year foreign language. "What? Why would they send one over there?"

Eric's face went white. "Oh shit, Parker," he said softly, putting a shaking hand on his classmate's shoulder. "...You didn't know he was the one shooting?"

_No. _It was lies, a nightmare; he just had to get away. He just had to get away and wake up, and then everything would be alright.

Parker jerked away from the guy as if he were diseased. "Fuck off," he muttered, turning away.

The parking lot was blocked off, so that he couldn't get to his car. He had never walked so far or so quickly before in his life. He didn't tire. He didn't think. All that registered, besides the whir of passing cars, was the steady plod of his own footsteps on the pavement, tapping out one word in their rhythm. _No no no no no._

* * *

When he finally arrived home, his dad was there, watching news coverage on the couch. His eyes were bloodshot. Parker couldn't tell whether he'd been drinking or crying.

"Parker," Jeff Morgan said, rising to embrace his son-not a common occurrence, to say the least. "...Man, am I glad to see you. I saw what happened at your school today, holy shit..."

"Yeah," Parker panted, expressionless, "pretty... pretty brutal."

Tate's senior picture flashed across the screen on the TV behind them, blond and dimpled and smiling. The words below it: _Suspect shot dead in his home._

_**No.**_

Parker jerked awkwardly away from his father, his heart in his ears and his mind frozen, his every muscle tensed and focused on only surviving, on just breathing one more breath. "I'm gonna go take a shower," he said, grabbing a nearly-full fifth of Jack Daniels from the counter on his way.

"Weren't you friends with that kid?" Jeff called after him.

"He was an acquaintance," Parker muttered. "We weren't close."

* * *

Naked, he sat on the wet linoleum, curled up into himself. He drank, the foul liquor diluted by the shower spray that leaked into it. Parker hardly tasted it anyway. When he found the bottle empty he cast it aside and hugged himself tighter, putting his head down on his wet knees. He didn't cry. He couldn't.

Parker's wrists were scarred on either side with gashes and dotted with cigarette burns. Beneath those, the ghosts of older cuts still lingered, faded and pink below the mosaic of brown scabs and deep red lines. But all of that was paltry, a facsimile of emotion that wasn't really there. He was pathetic and bad because he smoked and drank and loved mass murderers, because he collected souvenirs from impersonal deaths, centuries old, but couldn't be bothered to mourn his own. He was an awful boy who stacked liquor bottles where he should stack soggy tissues, undeserving of love because he couldn't really feel it.

Hallowed out and bloodless, dead already himself.


	7. Requiescat

**This chapter is named for the Oscar Wilde poem that Parker reads in the cemetery.**

* * *

In Parker's dream he rode a luck dragon over Fantasia. He sailed past the Rock Biter and Morla The Ancient, past the Sea Of Possibilities and the Childlike Empress's tower. He felt the wind in his hair and nestled close into the luck dragon's downy-warm skin. For a while, he was free. He didn't remember.

And in those moments, it was wonderful. It was just like the dreams that Parker used to have when he was little, before he knew loss and hospitals, whiskey and ammonia, bullets and guns. Before his body grew jagged and hard-the effortless mini six-pack muscles of his abdomen jutting and no good for cuddles, his elbows pointed and dangerous at the bends of their lengthened limbs. Before the hard breast plate of armor grew over his heart, so that words and images that used to make him cry now made only a paltry _phew-phew _sound, like toy guns, as they bounced, deflecting off.

When he landed at the Swamp Of Sadness he saw Tate. He was waist-deep in it, eyes big and scared. Parker turned. His luck dragon was gone.

Tate reached a hand out, causing his friend to jump. _"Parker," _he whispered, _"come see me..."_

* * *

"I'm so glad you came to see me," Mrs. Termine clucked, looking the boy opposite her up and down with the quintessential concern-eyes of a mental health professional.

"Thanks," Parker muttered. It was the first day back at school since the shooting. The counseling session had not been his idea.

He was silent for a long moment, staring at the wall with his arms crossed. All things considered, he looked remarkably together: his outfit was clean and not rumpled or slept-in. It was stylish, even, a feat Parker usually didn't care about: newer jeans and a light-blue collared shirt underneath a black sweater. It had even garnered him a compliment or two. His hair was clean and no messier than usual, and his eyes were not red-rimmed or bloodshot or tired.

"You know, Parker," said the counselor, breaking the silence, "this is a safe space to talk about what happened. Your grief, even. It's okay. I know what it's like to lose someone..."

"-You _don't!" _he cried, cutting her off, the forcefulness of his own voice surprising him almost as much as the anger that welled up from nowhere. "I mean, I'm sure you've lost people, but unless you've lost a mass _fucking _murderer, then no, you don't know what it's like!"

He pushed his hands up into his hair, tears coming to his eyes for the first time since Tate died. "When you lose someone like... he was, you don't just lose the person. You lose _every single memory _of them that might have possibly comforted you. The person in all those memories is gone, and there's a monster in their place!"

He gasped, sharp and involuntary, before letting the quivering breath out again. His eyes, blurry with unshed grief, eyed the Kleenex box, just fucking daring the old bitch. The box was still held together with masking tape, the formally escaped tissues shoved back in at lumpy angles. Parker almost smiled. He was still glad he did that.

Mrs. Termine made no move towards it. Despite Parker's sweet face and smallish size, she'd always found him slightly scary. Seeing him so close to tears, even now, was jarring.

He blinked until his eyes weren't in danger of spilling anymore, fanning at them for a second to hurry things along. He sniffled delicately, rubbed his nose on his sleeve, and looked up at the counselor with a pitiful expression.

"Can I please have a note to go home?" he begged shakily, deciding he might as well take advantage of the humiliating, pathetic state he was in now. "Please. I just really, really can't be here right now."

* * *

Excused from class for the rest of the day, Parker headed for Oddfellows. The graveyard was the one place in the world that still felt safe to him. He took comfort, even now, in the antiquated ceremony of it.

He seated himself against a large tree near the oldest row of children's graves. In the warmer months Parker liked to pick flowers to lay upon the stones of forgotten babies, a sentimental quirk he'd never dared tell anyone about. Wild violets were his favorite, little and humble and bright.

But now it was late in the autumn. Nothing lived. He reached into his bag and pulled out the library book he'd been able to swipe from Tate's locker before it was cleaned out: An old hard-bound volume of the works of Oscar Wilde. Tate, like Parker, had always loved poetry.

_"Tread lightly,"_ he read in a whisper, _"she is here. Under the snow."_ He noticed his hands shaking and wished dearly for a cigarette. But he couldn't bring himself to smoke around dead babies any more than he could around living ones. Their little lungs were fragile. He blinked, their stone tablets growing blurry in his sight. _"Speak softly, she c-can hear. The d-daisies grow..."_

"...Ugh, fuck me..." he muttered, putting the book down and silently berating himself for swearing. He dabbed at his eyes with the sleeve of his sweater. He couldn't read that one right now; he was too goddamn emotional. Maybe one of the plays or something instead.

Or maybe, he thought, he should just go home.

* * *

At home he smoked all of his cigarettes and slept away the rest of the afternoon. He dreamt again, this time that he was at school, sitting outside on the deserted bleachers. From far off he could see Tate, running on the empty track. He was dressed in the standard Oly high PE garb, the crinkly rayon shorts and worn-out logo tee-shirt. _Olympia Bears__. _Now the faded puff-paint creature looked fierce and grotesque, ready to pounce. Or perhaps he had just never noticed before.

Tate turned the corner, veering closer to the bleachers, before he looked up and noticed his friend. "Parker," he said, looking right into his eyes, "come see me."

He woke with a start and immediately set to putting his shoes on.

* * *

An autumn rain fell, torrential and heavy like tears. In the dark now, backlit by cracks of lightening and thunder, it really did look like a haunted house. Parker shuddered. At least the crime scene tape was gone.

But that wasn't his first stop. Before he did anything stupid or illegal he needed to know that he wasn't just crazy. He needed confirmation. He needed to hear the truth spoken out loud by someone other than Tate.

It was Addie who answered the door first. Parker's heart sank. He'd more than half-hoped that the smaller home next door was the wrong one, that strangers would greet him and send him on his way. But he smiled wanly.

"Hey, Addie," he said softly, before taking the shell-shocked girl in his arms. "I am so sorry, hun," he whispered as she began to cry. It took everything in him not to sob, too, but he stood with her and rocked her a while. Eventually Constance heard the interaction and came after her daughter.

"That's enough, Adelaide, honey," she muttered hoarsely, pushing Addie gently on the shoulder to hurry her away from Parker. "You go on and play with your ponies. Parker needs to see me."

Addie did as she was told, clearing space for Parker to fully take in Constance. He may have hid the physical effects of grief well, but she certainly wasn't. Her usually perfectly-coiffed hair was messy and dull, and her face, devoid of makeup, was pale and hallowed with tears. Maybe booze, too, or lack of sleep. Parker couldn't tell. But the usually beautiful, intimidating woman looked broken and vulnerable now.

"I was wondering when you'd show up," she said, leading him to the small table at the center of the old-fashioned kitchen. Parker remembered the house. It was the one the Langdons had lived in during his and Tate's freshman year, before Constance met Larry. She took a cigarette from the pack on the table and held it out to him. "Here."

"I'm sorry I didn't come sooner," said Parker, lighting up. He felt suddenly awkward. Tate's mother had always regarded him coolly at best. She tolerated him, but she was hardly warm or welcoming. Maybe because he was poor. Maybe because he was gay. Tate hadn't told her-he wasn't that stupid-but Parker knew she could tell. It didn't take a rocket scientist.

"No matter," she said, exhaling smoke. "The last thing we would have needed was any more attention drawn to this place... or that one. It's best that you lie low."

Parker nodded, looking down at the weathered tabletop. "Have you been to see him?" he asked quietly. "I mean, since... since it happened." He swallowed and dared to look up at her. "I know you know about that place, Mrs. Langdon. I know you've gotta have seen them all, too. Do you... do you know if he's... there?"

Constance shook her head, tears forming in her hazel eyes. It made Parker sad. He hated to see mothers cry-even mean ones. "I'm sure he is," she said roughly, wiping at the corner of her eye. "That God-forsaken place won't let anyone go on, let alone a fragile soul like him. So full of... pain, and wonder. So unlike you, Parker, or me." She smiled sadly, locking eyes with him. "We're two of a kind, you know. Perhaps that's why he was so taken with you. You and I have the privilege of being able to build walls around our hearts; walls that keep people out, walls that shield us from enough of the hurt that we don't lose our minds." She blinked, shedding tears. "But not him..."

Parker reached his free hand across the table to put it over hers. He noticed his shaking in a way he couldn't control. Nor could he control the tear that ran down his cheek or the way that his voice broke when he spoke: "Mrs... Constance... I am so sorry..."

Constance turned her face from him and stifled a small sob. For a long moment neither spoke. Parker just gripped her hand and avoided eye contact until they were both able to compose themselves. It might actually have been funny, he thought, if it wasn't so sad: Him and Constance Langdon, holding hands and smoking and crying together. It was so absurd he hardly could bear it.

Finally she drew a sigh and pulled her hand away. Parker glanced around for a napkin or something to wipe his wet face with, but seeing nothing, he just used his sleeves again. "I'm going over there," he said.

He expected protest, but Tate's mother only nodded. "You're strong," she said. "That means you'll be able to resist the house's... pull... better than most. But Parker... be careful."

He stubbed out his cigarette. "Why?"

"Because it also means that whatever is in there craves you more than anything."

Parker nodded, standing. "Thank you," he said. "For everything, I mean." Then he turned and saw himself out, into the downpour and over to Murder House.


	8. Everybody's Dead, Dave

It was Nora who answered the door. Lightening flashed, reflecting behind her, and in the sudden light she looked formidable. She was tall, icy, scarily pretty. But it was really the look in her eyes: she was perfectly, rock-hard cognitive, as aware as anyone living. The difference was jarring.

Parker held back a shudder. "Nora," he said, "I... I need to see Tate."

The ghost placed a hand on either side of the door frame. "I'm sorry," she said curtly, "but I simply can't allow that."

"Please, Nora," Parker begged, "I just need to see him this once and I promise, I'll never come back..."

"I can't allow that," she repeated. "He's very fragile right now and I must take care of him; I can't take my chances."

"But why?" He was close to panic now. "_Please... _I'm his best friend."

Nora pressed her lips together, releasing them with a tense sigh. "Come in," she said, moving aside in the doorway, "and I'll attempt to explain it it you."

* * *

Inside the house it was colder than it was outside, causing wet Parker to hug himself and shiver. It must have been all the spiritual activity, he thought. If a single ghost could create a cold spot, then Murder House could have been a meat freezer. He wondered how he could have never noticed.

Nora passed him a clean dish towel to from the kitchen counter to dry his damp hair. "He does not... remember his crimes," she said grimly. "And I fear that such knowledge at this point would be too much for him. I might lose him forever."

"So he's here?" Parker asked desperately. That was all he cared about, mass shooting be damned. "He didn't just go on?"

A look of sympathy finally crossed the ghost's pale face. "My dear boy..." she whispered, moving forward to stroke his smooth cheek with one frigid hand. "...No one goes on from here."

Something about her suddenly made emotion well up in Parker. Nora was twenty-nine when she died, just like his own mother. Standing there in her pale green chiffon dress and gold heels, her blonde curls tucked loosely around her face like a halo, she might have been too young and pretty to come off as maternal to most teenage boys. But to him she was the very picture of everything he missed. It brought tears to his eyes, and when he tried to speak he choked on them.

"You know, I get why you cry," he sniffled. "I understand. I... I lost a baby, too..."

A knowing expression crossed Nora's beautiful, sad face. "You've lost a great many in your young life, haven't you darling?"

Her kind words broke something in him. Parker put on a good front, but it was just that. All his cagey edges, his disaffected manner, his tough facade: he'd created it to protect his heart. Because the heart itself was so tender that it often hurt just existing. It brooded over others' pain and ached with its own; it wanted so very much to love and be loved that it was all exquisitely emotional and painful. A heart like that had no chance in the world, especially not with his face and his voice and the fact that he loved boys. The world would have eaten him alive. So he hid it and made himself strong.

He couldn't answer Nora. He gripped the edge of the counter to keep from doubling over with the force of the sob that wracked him.

The ghost caught him. It didn't matter now that she wasn't warm or that her violet perfume smelled vaguely of death or that the house was dark and empty. All Parker knew was that his chest felt torn open and that he was uttering noises the likes of which he hadn't in a good ten years. He didn't even know anymore whether he was crying for his mother, his sister, for Tate or for his victims, for the sorry state of the universe in general or for himself. Perhaps it was all of that at once.

But in that moment, Nora's embrace was so consoling and perfect that he could have stayed forever. It was as if it were tailor-made for him, a lullaby algorithm of everything he wanted. He was sobbing, sure, but it was a sweet release in the knowing embrace of someone soft and delicate and feminine and kind. His face pressed against her shoulder, he saw visions: sun-dappled kitchens, good things baking; babies, dresses, light. _Stay, _it seemed to whisper. _Stay. Stay. Stay._

And then, abruptly, maggots. Eaten-through fabric and corpses and dirt. He choked on his own tears and pulled away from her with a start.

The worst of the storm inside of him had passed, and he was able to pull himself together and dry his eyes. "Can I see him just once?" he asked calmly, less frantic now that he'd finally had a good cry. "I won't say anything about what he did at school, I promise. I won't even say he's dead."

Nora hesitated a moment, then nodded. "Go ahead," he said. "He's upstairs in his bedroom."

* * *

The horror-movie storm still sounded, creating the perfect soundtrack for his growing sense of dread. He didn't understand. For the past several weeks all he'd wanted was to see Tate once more-one more conversation, one more smile, one more hug-and now suddenly it took everything in him not to turn around and run. How exactly did a teenager face the ghost of his dead best friend?

He took a deep breath and cracked open the door to the room that used to be Tate's. It was picked bare now, but the walls were painted the same deep blue and the bed-frame remained, a skeleton of what it had been. The blond phantom atop it turned his familiar face to Parker and smiled.

"Oh... hey."

"Hey," Parker repeated, crossing the room to Tate's side and reaching into his jacket with one awfully shaking hand for his cigarettes. They were gone, of course. Dammit.

He studied the ghost's face. He'd feared that Tate would be wounded, but if he retained any marks from death, the way Nora or the others did, they were hidden by his clothes. He looked so lifelike and solid and identical to his mortal self that Parker almost wondered if he'd faked the whole thing. But when he reached out a tentative hand to touch him, he found the dead boy cold. Of course.

"How have you been?" Parker asked weakly.

Tate shrugged. "It's been kind of boring. Mom left with Addie a while ago and she told me I couldn't leave." He dropped his voice to a whisper. "I think... I think I might have died. Nora won't tell me."

Parker looked pained. "Yeah, hun," he said gently. "Yeah, you did. I'm sorry." He braced himself for panic or tears, but Tate seemed to take the news in stride.

"Oh," he said. "Huh... I guess I didn't like life all that much anyway. And Nora's here to take care of me."

"But what about us?" asked Parker, suddenly angry. "We had plans, Tate; we had each other. Did all of that mean nothing? God, I'm sorry, but I'm losing my fucking mind here missing you. I just cried so hard I about puked my guts up. You think that's funny? You think it's funny and all good and well to make me lose my shit and embarrass myself, crying in front of fucking everyone and completely losing my cool, wondering how the hell I'm ever going to go on without you? Is that nothing to you; am _I _nothing?!"

The ghost looked hurt. "I'm sorry," he said quietly. "I didn't mean to die... please don't be mad..."

Parker drew a shaky sigh and wiped his eyes. "I'm gonna cry so fucking much they're gonna have to rename me Lake Parker," he muttered. Then he laughed.

"Don't cry," said Tate brightly. "We can still hang out! We can... hey, the TV still works! Come on. It'll be just like it used to be."

* * *

_"Where is everyone, Hol?" _

_"They're dead, Dave."_

_"Who is?"_

_"Everybody, Dave."_

_"What about Captain Hollister?"_

_"Everybody's dead, Dave."_

The show's laugh track echoed eerily through the abandoned house, artificial and mocking. Outside rain still fell, though the thunder and lightening had passed. Tate and Parker, their hands tightly interlaced, had been watching a Red Dwarf marathon for so long that the series had ended and was now playing the pilot again.

Parker saw the light beginning to creep in between the shutters and thought that he should probably leave. Though he longed to feel the easy contentment that Tate seemed to, he couldn't shake the unease that burnt steady at his core. He wanted dearly to believe that things were as okay as they seemed, but he knew better. The hand he clutched, so dear to him, was a dead one. He felt frightened and sad and sick and guilty all at once.

No sooner had he gotten up to say goodbye than he felt the creature pounce on him. Parker froze, terrified. How could something so much smaller than him be so much stronger? He'd thought he knew the home and its many nightmare creatures, but this one was new to him. Shriveled and grotesque, it looked to have once been a baby. But now it had the grisled face of a dead man and a mouth full of sharp, inhuman teeth. It seemed to be the manifestation of all of the pain and evil in the house.

He held his breath as the thing brandished one sharp claw, ready to rip open the scar on his right wrist. _This is it, _he thought. _I am going to die in here..._

"Go away, Thaddeus!" cried Nora, appearing seemingly out of nowhere. "Go away! _Go away!"_

The thing vanished and she took its place atop Parker, leaning over the breathless boy with a frantic expression. "Are you alright?"

"Yeah," Parker trembled. "I'm fine... I just... It just..."

"You need to leave," Nora said sternly, pulling him to his feet. "Leave and do not _ever_ return, do you understand me? This is an unsafe place for you. You cannot keep tempting what lurks here!"

He looked past her to see Tate draw his knees to his chest, hiding his face.

"I love you!" Parker called hoarsely as he was rushed out the door. "Tate, I love you..."


	9. The Ballad of the Harp Weaver

_"...And deep in the night I felt my mother rise, and stare down upon me with love in her eyes..." _The pages of the crumpled, photocopied poem shook in Parker's hand as reached up to wipe his eyes again, squinting through the reddened things into the uncomfortable theater lights. _"...I saw my mother sitting on the one good chair, a light falling on her from I couldn't tell where..."_

The two drama teachers, Mr. Falchuk and Mr. Murphy, sat in the front row of the school auditorium, moved but unconcerned. The assignment at hand-choose a poem to read aloud to the class on stage-was a thinly-disguised exercise in healing in the wake of the high school's unspeakable tragedy, and Parker's tears were by no means the first in the class. Most of the students had cried through it.

_The Ballad of the Harp Weaver, _by Edna St. Vincent Millay. Parker had once seen footage of Johnny Cash reading it. Somehow the whole affair had come off as a lot more badass and a lot less pitiful when he did it.

_"Looking nineteen, and n-not a day older..." _Parker's voice broke and he covered his face with one hand, too overcome to read any more. Nineteen and not a day older. Young mothers, best ghost friends. Teenaged and decayed. Dead. A few weeks prior he would have been humiliated at the very prospect of weeping inconsolably on stage in front of a room full of these assholes-hell, he at least would have had the decency to run off stage or something-but now he gave no more fucks. He just sobbed standing there, like morbid performance art.

"Parker..." after an uncomfortable amount of time he heard Mr. Murphy's voice, felt a light hand trying to urge him from the stage. "Parker, come on, just come sit down..."

He let himself be lead back into the audience, where he collapsed in a seat between a stoic football player and a pouty-faced girl and continued crying. He held his head low between his own hands, looking down at his toes, in their striped socks, poking through the holes in his Keds. His gray cardigan-very Kurt Cobain, really-was threadbare, with holes at the wrist cuffs and chosen that morning for no other reason than it had pockets that could hold a lot of Kleenex.

He pulled one out and congratulated the world silently in his head. He had to hand it, the damn place had finally broken him-had to pull out all the stops, but it did it. The thread of control to which he'd clung so dearly, by booze and sex and disillusionment, had been snapped, and he was falling. The few things that had once kept him safe were shattered, and everything that he'd thought he'd known about reality was wrong. But fuck, he thought, if he was going to be a sobby mess he was _damn _sure going to be cool about it. It would be his closing number, the encore performance he knew they'd all cheer for.

The boy was a star. He could make even this cool, just like crooked teeth and messy hair and gayness. So like any star would do-Paul Newman, James Dean, hell, even Marlon Brando-he held the soggy thing to his face and sobbed in a disruptively loud fashion all through the turn of an uncomfortable boy who was trying his best to read a casual poem about baseball.

Finally he heard the teacher's voice again behind him. Mr. Murphy was the gayer of the two, blond and overt and campy. Parker usually liked him.

"Parker," the gentle voice said again. "Hey, I think you need to see a counselor right now. Come on, get up, it's okay. I'll walk you there..."

He lurched to his feet with a gasp. "I can walk myself," he asserted tearfully, and was promptly not allowed to.

* * *

"Mmkay," Mrs. Termine hemmed, trying and failing to hide her strong discomfort. "I've written you a referral with Mr. Thomas, the school's drop-in psychiatrist, for Thursday, alright? From there he can get you set up with someone to see regularly, outside of school, maybe some medication..."

"Is that how we deal with death now?" he cried, impressing even himself with his ability to argue even though the ever-steady tears. "Here on the edge of the twenty-first century... His body's not three weeks in the ground and you want to throw some pills at me to make me _happy, _to make me forget? Is that progress? Drugging me stupid until I forget the conversations I had with my dead best friend?"

"There are _no _ghosts, Parker," the counselor said firmly. "That's a maladaptive coping mechanism you've created for yourself in order to deal with this trauma, and frankly, it's why I think you need the help you do. This is beyond my scope now. You need medication, maybe temporary commitment..."

"The hospital?" he choked on the word, raw in his sobbing throat. He laughed derisively, dripping snot a little. "I live in a fucking travel trailer on wooden stilts! Do you know what happens in there to poor kids, kids like me? _We never leave. _You think they can _help _me there? The world doesn't give a shit about you when your parents can't pay! I have no one, do you hear me? _No one living!_"

"Parker," Mrs. Termine repeated through her teeth, "You're getting out of hand. I need for you to take a deep breath now and listen to me."

_"No!" _He waited, his teary face in a stand-off against her stern one, and won. He gulped, gasping air, and halphazardly brushed a few tears away. "You think you can help me? That you can reach me even a little bit, even at all? No. Let me tell you something, lady: I see a reality that every other goddamn person in this school is blind to. A reality that if you ever saw, you'd go every bit as batshit insane as I am. Are you really so dumb, so arrogant, to think that only the things _you_ see exist? The dead, all the different... versions... of them, that go on... they are _everywhere. _And they are hurting and confused and malevolent and _pissed off _just like I am. It's a city-a _world_-of the dead, and once you see them, you can't ever unsee them; you can't ever not walk among them, again."

He stopped to blow his nose and then looked into her shaken eyed steadily. "Now if you don't mind, I need to go home now. I'm really upset." He picked up his things and left then, without waiting for permission or argument.

* * *

When he showed up hours later on Constance Langdon's doorstep, the roles of their last visit seemed to have reversed. While her face still showcased the shadows of grief, she looked far more pulled together than she had the last time. Her hair was properly set again and her eyes were dry. Parker, meanwhile, looked and moved as if he'd been hit by a freight train.

"Parker," she gasped, drawing a hand to her chest before reaching out to him. "Come in here, darling, easy now... my lord, who got you this drunk?"

He pulled a face, collapsing into one of her kitchen chairs. "Le Voyeur kicked me out for crying too much," he slurred. "The fucking hell-hole. I didn't like it there, anyway..."

She passed him a paper napkin and waited, blotting at his face with it herself when his limp arms made no move to. "Do you need a place to stay, baby?" she asked, the tenderness unnatural in her voice.

He shook his head. "I need you to tell me," he said with breathless desperation, "...are the things I saw over at that house real?"

A grave expression crossed her pretty, hallowed face. "Yes," she said bluntly, pressing her thin lips together. "But I was a damn fool to ever tell you as much in the first place. To think that a mere child, no matter how strong of spirit, could possibly withstand knowing the truth."

Parker put his face in his hands. "I've gotta go back over there," he sobbed. "Oh, Mrs. Langdon, I've just gotta... But I need... I need you to tell me that there's still some chance for me..."

A strange look crossed her features then, a look of pity and kindness, the gaze that a vet with a needle might give to an old, ailing dog. "I think that where there is flesh," she said slowly, "and strength, Parker, there is always some hope."

He hiccuped and looked up at her. "...So you're saying I should go?"

"Hardly." She reached out, stilted, to stroke his damp cheek. "...But the world has given you a lousy lot, baby. I wouldn't begrudge you any decision you might need to make."

He nodded and then stood unsteadily, sniffling. "Thank you, Constance," he said, heading for the door. "I'll come back and see you and Addie again soon, okay?"

He later would wonder if she knew, even then, that he wouldn't.

* * *

The headline read _Olympia High Massacre Claims One More. _The former home of Tate Langdon was the first place the police thought to look when Parker Morgan was reported missing forty-eight hours later. When they found him, no one thought to investigate for foul play. It all made perfect sense: the gay best friend of a recently deceased mass murderer, his recent behavior reported as crazed and erratic, found with his wrists slashed in the exact spot where Tate had been gunned down weeks earlier. His body was buried at Oddfellows beneath a small, flat stone bearing only his name and the dates of his short life, similar to his mother's and right next to hers. Six months later his father, in his grief, would drink himself to death at home.

_"Go aw-" _Parker had whispered weakly as the Infantata brandished its claws atop him once again, unable to get the words out in time. In retrospect, he'd always think, he hadn't really wanted to.

Minutes later he woke up again in the living room, a version of himself that was at once identical to what he had been and so very, very new. Tate's face, smiling, was the first thing that he saw.

* * *

**RIP Parker. : ( Tragic, but you must admit the boy went out how he lived: in style, and like a true fucking drama queen. Worry not, though: In AHS, death is always just the beginning of the story. Next up we skip ahead a few years, see how ghost life has treated our pair, and meet another OC I hold dear. Stay tuned!**


	10. Two Dead Boys

**A/N: If you read _Can I Keep You?, _there is a GREAT BIG Easter egg in here for you. Prepare yourself.**

* * *

**-September 2001-**

"You wanna come play cards with me and Troy?" asked Bryan, coming up beside Parker.

"Not now, Bry," said Parker absently, waving the red-headed preteen away. He was busy staring out the attic window at the moving van in the driveway.

"I hope it's somebody cool," Bryan muttered, walking away and being quickly replaced by Tate. The blond ghost approached slowly and put his arms around Parker from behind, peering over his shoulder.

"People," he said flatly. "Shit. How long has it been?"

Seven years. Seven years of death, nonexistence to the outside world. Seven years of what usually felt like the longest sleepover ever. Seven years of stories with Nora and card games with Bryan and Troy and periodic visits from Constance and Addie. While sociable Parker had managed to become friendly with almost all the house's other spirits-Elizabeth, Moira, Maria and Gladys-Tate kept more to himself, only really associating with Parker, Nora, Charles, and occasionally tolerating the twins' company. In truth, many of the other ghosts were wary of him, the women in particular. His cagey nature and bad reputation tended to proceed him, even in death.

Seven years. Parker couldn't remember now when exactly they'd started doing more than just sleep together in their shared bedroom. Three years ago? Four? All he knew was that after what felt like a lifetime of best friendship, of secrets and inside jokes and crying on each other's shoulders, one night they'd reached for each other and become lovers. Parker could remember being alive and in love with his straight best friend and wanting that fate more than anything. Funny: this wasn't exactly how he'd imagined getting it.

"Seven years," he said finally, out loud. "I counted." All through those seven years, the large house stood empty of mortals. Signs were put up periodically in the front yard and prices were lowered, but no one was all too eager to buy the site of such a recent, bloody tragedy. It was just too soon.

But now the pair watched a family make their way up the front walk: a man, a woman, and a girl. It was hard to tell her exact age from three stories up.

Tate rolled his eyes. "I bet she's gonna take our bedroom. Fucking great."

"She's a girl, though," said Parker, smiling. "I like girls. You think maybe she'd let me dress her?"

"It's not the same as your dolls," Tate laughed. "And from the look of her, I don't think she wants to wear those flowery things you like..." He trailed off, a look of worry crossing his face. "Hey," he said gently, turning Parker around to face him, "just because it's a family doesn't necessarily mean they're gonna have another baby. Don't go all emotional on me about that."

"I do not get... emotional," Parker muttered, avoiding his gaze.

"I'm not trying to make fun of you," Tate insisted. "I just don't like to see you sad. Nora's bad enough... speaking of which, shit. She's not gonna like this."

Parker gave his arm a reassuring squeeze. Though Nora had stepped up to the plate, becoming lucid and whole in the wake of Tate's death, in the years following she'd begun to slip again, growing increasingly disoriented and tearful. Lately she'd been especially bad.

"Come on," he said, not wanting to upset Tate by delving further into that. "Let's go check it out."

* * *

"This place is full of history, Nona," the man was saying to his daughter as the two ghosts approached, invisible, to watch from the front room. He looked to be in his forties, with dark hair, a tan, and thick eyebrows. He had the kind of face that was probably boyishly adorable some twenty years prior, though now it was marked slightly with smile lines and crows feet. But he was tall, fit, and had a jovial appearance, if a little boring.

"Did you know that your Grandma Christmas once stayed here in her heyday? While filming one of her most famous vampire movies..." On the last phrase he put on a cheesy, mock-horror voice, twinkling his fingers in the unamused girl's direction.

The girl-Nona, they assumed-raised her eyebrows. "Which one?"

"Oh, who can remember?" her father laughed. "Anyway, go on and help your mom."

Now Parker's interest was piqued. A grandma named Christmas who used to be in vampire movies? Maybe this new family wasn't as run-of-the-mill as they looked. Regardless, he felt somehow drawn to the girl. He was about to follow her when he heard the familiar clacking of pumps come through the doorway. Tate, beside him, audibly groaned.

"Shit," he said. "My mother. Ugh. She just has to come _sink_ her claws into these poor people before they even get moved in! Of course! Fuck this."

Parker couldn't argue. As much as he wanted to like Constance, her visits were rarely pleasant and ended in anger or tears more often than not. She was no warmer to him in death than she had been for most of his life, and when the matter of his sexuality came up she could be downright nasty.

She also brought stress. She, like Nora before her, was adamant that Tate not be reminded of his crimes-at least, not without the helping hand of a professional. She was stuck on the idea of him "going on" via the help of a therapist or a medium. Thankfully for both the dead boys, none so far would touch the house with a ten foot pole.

Tate huffed. "I'm gonna go play cards with Troy and Bryan..."

* * *

"So you're going into high school?" Parker asked. He was sitting atop Nona's partially assembled bed, watching her put her clothes away. He had posed as a helpful neighbor and was now in the process of ingratiating himself with the family.

"Yep," she said, sounding less than thrilled. "Ninth grade. Hopefully it's better than middle school was in Oregon."

Parker studied her. Up close she was small and thin, holding herself with the quintessential discomfort of a fourteen-year-old girl. She was pale, with mid-length dark hair parted in the middle and big, round dark eyes that had slight circles underneath. Surely she had no idea, but her face was striking, with a high forehead, a long and slightly upturned nose, and a small, bow-shaped mouth. She was dressed in a black tutu-skirt, striped black-and-white tights, and an ill-fitting tee-shirt with an anime character on it. He thought silently that a nice shift dress would have looked prettier.

"Oly?"

"Yeah," she answered. "Is that where you go, too?"

Parker shook his head, thinking fast. "I'm... homeschooled. Hey, um, you think maybe we should open the door? I don't want your parents getting the wrong idea or anything..."

Nona laughed, turning to him. "It's fine," she said. "I mean, no offense, but it's not like you're gonna try anything..."

"Wait, you can tell I'm..."

"Gay?" she finished, raising her eyebrows. "It's fine. I had a friend who was at my old school. And my dad grew up with two dads. He was born in like, 1956, too, when it _really _wasn't done."

Parker sat up straighter, suddenly interested. Aside from drunken encounters, he'd never had the chance to meet many other men like himself. The idea of gay dads fascinated him. "Really?" he asked eagerly. "Did you ever meet them?"

"My grandpas? A few times, yeah, when I was little. They live on the East coast, though, so not that often. The one with the hands is sweet, but the other one is kind of weird... Ugh, I guess I shouldn't say that, he was always nice to me. But he just has kind of a... serial killer vibe, somehow. And he still dresses like it's the '50's."

Parker's nose wrinkled. "Only one of them has hands?"

"No," laughed Nona, "they both do. But one of them has weird ones. They're like..." She paused, contorting her fingers into something resembling the Vulcan 'Live Long and Prosper' signal. "...Ectro-something, my dad said it was called. Ectrodactyly."

Parker sighed, laying back against the undressed mattress. He wished he hadn't asked; all he'd succeeded in doing was depressing himself. Seven years prior he'd gone out in a blaze of glory, in the most epic of his well-known emotional shit-fits. Unlike all the ones before it, that one had ended up costing him his mortal life.

It wasn't a bad existence, all things considered. He'd be young and good-looking forever. He had eternal existence with his best friend, the one person besides his own mother who had ever seemed to love and understand him. And yet... it was no life. Sometimes he felt so cabin-fevered and sick with grief that he hardly knew what to do with himself. He longed for the outside world, for the chance to raise the family he'd always dreamed of. Poems about babies sometimes sent him into fits of tears.

Nona sat down next to him. "Do you ever feel weird?" she asked softly. "Like you know about a world that no one else even realizes exists?"

Parker sat up, looking into her sad eyes. "Yeah," he said, smiling weakly. "Yeah, I do."

* * *

**Next up: Tate starts getting the "help" Constance wants for him, and we learn that the world Nona sees isn't exactly the same one Parker knew in his mortal days.**


	11. Divination

**So, I'm working on a big IRL project right now that cuts into fanfic time. So if I update a little less than I used to, that's why. But I will always update at least a couple of times a month unless I announce a hiatus. **

**Also worth noting: the two mangas Nona shows Parker here didn't actually come out until a year later in 2002. So I took slight liberties with that. Because LOL at Parker not wanting to be compared to really girly anime ukes. I don't think he realizes that he's effeminate. **

* * *

Tate sat across from the therapist, his arms crossed and his face the very picture of sullen defiance. The cardigan he wore belonged to Parker-or more specifically, Parker's mom. Years earlier, after his father's death, Addie had snuck into Parker's former home and brought him some of his old things. Among the treasured loot was his NeverEnding Story shirt, his post-mortem scrapbook, his dress-up doll set, and the aforementioned sweater. The dark-haired ghost liked to wear it when he felt weak. Draped in it now-an '80's number patterned in blocky, geometrical jewel tones-Tate seemed completely oblivious to the fact that it bordered on cross-dressing.

She peered at him. The plaque on her large desk read "Melinda Weston, Ph.d". She was a woman in her early forties, about 5'7" and slender, with dark eyes and shoulder-length blonde hair that looked dyed. "Okay Tate," she said brightly, in a voice that retained a slight New Orleans drawl. "Why don't you tell me a bit about why you're here."

"My mother wanted me to come," he said flatly. "She's a cocksucker."

His near-black eyes met hers, daring Melinda to react. Were he in a better state of mind, he might have felt sorry for her. He had nothing personal against the therapist. But working with her was something Constance wanted, which made her the enemy by association. He was sure as _hell _not going to play nice.

The doctor drew a mask of neutrality across her pretty, oval face. "Okay..." she said slowly. "And why do you feel that way about her?"

Tate relaxed into his seat, folding his legs crosswise beneath him and letting his arms relax onto his knees. "I mean it literally," he said, almost smiling. "She sucked off the neighbor, sucked his cock. Can you imagine that?"

Melinda nodded slowly. "And that upset you," she relayed. "Can you tell me why?"

Tate quirked a wry, lopsided smile, showing one dimple. "No," he said after a moment.

There was a long pause. "...That's quite a sweater you have on," Melinda said finally. She laughed lightly. "I think I had a similar one back in college."

Tate grinned mischievously. "Yeah, it was my best friend's mom's. Oh! Speaking of which, I suck _his _cock. I mean it, I do. I suck his cock and he sucks mine. It's fucking great."

"Are you gay?" the therapist asked cautiously. "Bisexual?"

"What?" laughed Tate. "No! Of course not. But head from a guy? It's pretty great. And it doesn't taste so bad, either. Do you want to know how we do it? He likes when I..."

"-This friend must be important to you," Melinda cut in. "He must be someone you trust a lot, to do such intimate things with him..."

Tate's carefully arranged face fell, the mask slipping to reveal a slight pout. "Yeah," he said softly, crossing his arms over his stomach. "Yeah, he is. He's the only person in the world I really trust..."

He waited for the doctor to speak, but she didn't. Her black-lined eyes just probed his naked face silently, waiting. Tate felt tears come to his eyes and cursed his mother inwardly. Why did the therapist she found have to be a nice lady, who was pretty and maternal and blonde? If she were some asshole guy he'd have no problem evading her, chasing her away. But she wasn't, and now he was caving. Fuck.

"It's a dirty, helpless world we live in," he said finally, his voice small. "It's a filthy goddamn horror show... there's so much pain, you know? There's _so _much."

Tate's big eyes sparkled like onyx, or sidewalks at night. Melinda felt uncomfortably overwhelmed with emotions of her own. He looked so vulnerable suddenly, as if he might need her. As if he might cry. She couldn't remember when she'd seen Nona cry last. The little girl she'd known had disappeared quite suddenly, leaving in her place a cold, evasive young woman who didn't seem to need much of anything from anyone. Least of all her mother.

"He just... he's like this... light, in all of that. The only light, _my _only light. Maybe I didn't always like guys, but he's a person, you know? No matter who he was, he'd be that; he'd be the only thing that's ever made me feel understood or safe..." Fire flashed in Tate's damp eyes. "...and my mom wants to take me away from him, okay, she wants us separated. I don't know where I'd go, but I... I can't go without him, he has to come with me."

"I'm hearing that your mother doesn't approve of you being so close to another boy?" Melinda questioned. "Or maybe doesn't approve of who he is?"

Tate shook his head. "You can't let that happen," he said frantically. "Please."

He looked at her imploringly, pitifully. If nothing else, he figured, emotion would get her on his side, thus beating Constance at her own game. He wouldn't admit, even to himself, just how starved for maternal comfort he really was.

* * *

"I hate them," Nona fumed, trying her best to keep still while Parker gently picked out the gum that the girls at school had thrown in her hair. "I hate them I hate them I hate them..."

Parker rested his chin on her shoulder. She smelled like Coty Vanilla Musk perfume and was dressed in a short black plaid dress with giant safety pins stuck in it. "You could always scare them," he suggested.

"No," said Nona firmly, "I can't. That's the problem; that's why we had to move here in the first place."

"Huh?"

She sighed. "Remember how I told you that I know about things, things that other people don't? ...Mom doesn't know that I know, but there's a reason we never see her mom."

"Which is... What?"

_"Witchcraft,"_ Nona whispered, turning to look at Parker through a tangle of dark hair. "The powers that be... it skips a generation, sometimes two. My mom sure as hell doesn't have it, and I think the girls in the academy growing up made her hate it, made her resent that she couldn't be normal. She was like... stuck between two worlds. She didn't fit in with the coven because she had no power, but to the outside world... well, her family wasn't exactly white picket-fence."

"So she remedied that by... what? Marrying the son of a horror film star and a gay dude who rescued his boyfriend from the freak show?" Already Parker had probed Nona for stories about her father's family of origin. He found them wonderfully exciting.

She looked annoyed. "That's not the point. The point is last year, these girls were making fun of me, and I got angry and... I dunno, the fire just kind of... happened. It was like my feelings took root in the material world, like they... manifested. There's a word for it, you know? _Pyrokinesis. _But anyway, mom flipped her shit and she forced us to move. As if that's going to change anything."

Parker looked skeptical. Witches? Pyrokinesis, covens? It sounded to him like the invention of a bored, lonely girl who didn't want to be normal. If only she knew what a gift normality was, how much he'd give to have it back. He sighed and leaned back onto her, continuing to read _Junjou Romantica _over her shoulder.

"Do your parents know you read this?" he asked. "Cause some of this shit is really dirty." Not that Parker minded. He was rather enjoying it.

"They don't _read _it," Nona said with a shrug. Then she wriggled under her bed. "Besides, there are way worse ones... here."

She brushed the dust from her hair and presented the ghost with a different manga. The cover illustration depicted a tall, broad-shouldered man in a business suit, his strong arms possessively clasped around a tiny, frail-looking blond boy whose eyes took up two-thirds of his face. At least Parker _thought_ the small one was a boy-he couldn't really be sure. He looked almost more alien than human.

_"Okane Ga Nai," _Nona pronounced clumsily. _"No Money. _Here, look... It's not all gross. The little one's gentle and sweet. He kinda reminds me of you."

"I am _not _that girly," Parker protested, slightly offended. "And I wouldn't do what he does... he's like what, this big guy's sex slave?" His nose wrinkled as he leafed through it. "I don't like this one. It's kind of fucked up."

"It's no worse than you and your dead boyfriend."

Parker gave her a look like a deer in headlights. "E-Excuse me?"

_"Divination,"_ said Nona intensely, her dark stare unblinking. "...I know exactly who you are, Parker Morgan, and I know exactly _what _you are."

Parker stood, the comic book dropping limply from one hand. He opened his mouth to speak but instead it just hung there dumbly; no words came. "...Wha... how?" he managed finally.

"There's a thing called the Internet now," she said. "You really think an Oly student wouldn't know who Tate Langdon was? What he did? Hell, it's been almost a decade, all your classmates are graduated, and we still can't speak his name around that place. He's like fucking Beetlejuice; we're terrified."

Parker's face fell. "Are you afraid of me?" he asked softly.

Nona laughed derisively. "I'm more concerned with why you're content to exist here playing housewife to him for eternity. Do you not even care what he did?"

"You don't understand," he insisted. "That wasn't him that day, not really. This house, it gets to a person in ways you don't know..."

"I don't know of any other mass murderers who lived here..."

"He's fragile!" Parker cried, defensive. "He's not _like _other people who've lived here, he's not like anyone!"

Nona looked horrified. "Yeah, you're sure as hell right about that," she said. "God... you're worse than he is. You think it's okay!"

"I don't!"

"Whatever," she said coldly. "I overheard his mother and my mom talking. She's been waiting for years for a therapist to work on him. With her help he's going to go on-straight to hell, I'd imagine."

Parker could take no more. Hurt, angry, and frightened all at once, the ghost vanished into thin air.

* * *

Rain fell lightly as Johnny Angel fidgeted with the locked door to Olympia High School's back entrance. He wasn't worried. It was the dead of night, and he was well-versed at jimmying locks open. Fifteen years on the street left a person with a certain set of skills.

Inside now, the thirty-year-old crept down the darkened hallway like a cat. The beating heart in his chest felt out of place, conspicuous-heavy and hammering. At two in the morning, high schools were like playgrounds or graveyards: a place for the dead. But really, where wasn't?

He paused before the library door, thinking of Parker. His fallen friend crossed his mind often in the seven years since his passing. Johnny saw him as a victim of circumstance, a bright light snuffed out too soon by the indirect hand of a psychopath. That was why almost a year ago, he'd agreed to help a certain spirit seek revenge. Stephanie Boggs wanted Tate Langdon to suffer because he'd taken her life, and Johnny was more than happy to help her. He had a horse in this race, too.

The door was open, just as the spirits had promised. When he walked in, the small group of bloodied teenagers surveyed him skeptically.

Kyle spoke first. "Oh for God's sake, Stephanie! _This _is the guy we've been waiting a year for? How drunk were you when you met him last Halloween?"

"Would you lay the hell off?" cut in Kevin, pushing his long hair out of his eyes. "He could be the last chance we have to find Tate's sorry ass..."

"I can leave if you want me to leave," Johnny said. "But I _think _I've got a few things you all want. One is a pulse. The other is connections. Hear me out, and I guarantee you'll have the Halloween you've been wanting this year..."

* * *

The old television made black and white light dance sporadically across the blackened attic. Parker was still so pensive from his conversation with Nona that he didn't even notice Tate until the blond ghost slipped in beside him, under the faded coves of their makeshift bed.

On-screen a young woman sat atop a throne in the middle of a forest, a crown of chrysanthemums in her hair, commanding an army of ghouls with the motions of her hands. She looked like an older Nona.

"Check it out," Parker whispered, instinctively closing his arms around his lover when he sidled up close. "It's Christmas Weston, Nona's paternal grandma. She was the biggest horror star of her day. She's hot, right?" He honestly had no idea.

Tate seemed uninterested. He was silent, burying his face in Parker's bare chest. After a moment the dark-haired ghost felt tears on his skin.

"...I did something bad in life, didn't I?" Tate asked quietly.

Parker sighed. "What is this about, hun?"

Tate sniffled. "Do you think that I'm bad?"

Parker drew another sigh, slower and shakier this time. "No, sweetheart," he said slowly, "I don't think you're bad. I just think that you can't be this capable of love and sadness and tenderness without being capable of a whole lot of rage, too. Okay? They're all just feelings, they go hand in hand."

"But what if I did? What if I did something awful?"

Parker lay frozen. "What do you remember doing?" he asked carefully.

Tate sobbed into his best friend's chest. "I can't remember..."

"You're good," Parker whispered, surprising himself with his words' ferocity. He bent his neck to place a kiss atop Tate's messy hair. "You're good, I promise, you are..."

* * *

**A Mott descendant on one side and a witch on the other? Nona has no chance at normality...**


End file.
